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Kevin-the-lubber

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Everything posted by Kevin-the-lubber

  1. Kevin-the-lubber
    I have high quality campbell plans and loads of graphics software so I’m sure at least one of them can handle .psd’s. I’ve noticed more and more variances today, the Campbell pin rails are much slimmer in the fat part than revell and as I’m going to remake these entirely it would be good to have a reliable source.
  2. Kevin-the-lubber
    This is why I was reluctant to start a build log; like a little jack russell I find it very difficult to walk past rabbit holes. A quick, small experiment this morning, printing a section of deck joint using a filament printer; Pretty acceptable, don't you think? Much much better than I was expecting. Scale-wise, the planks are 2mm wide, the seams are 0.3mm. The join is exactly what I was aiming for, nice and snug. I haven't even glued these two parts together, that's how nicely they sit. This is with a standard 0.4mm nozzle, I could get a finer top finish if I dropped down to a 0.2mm, though I quite like the grain; it's not really wood-like but nevertheless gives some texture. The black is another experiment. I found a little tub of graphite powder in our gigantic 'making' drawer a few days back, tried brushing that into the grooves and grain. The thicker line is inked. I think I almost prefer the graphite. Now, since filament printing solves other resin problems - e.g. the rigidity of the deck, in this instance needing no further support other than perhaps a lap strip under the joint; and no post printing shrinkage or curling - I have two full sections printing away. They'll take around 12 hours, but if they come out as hoped, I may yet swerve towards my own deck and positioning/sizing the furniture closer to Campbell's plan. The only down side is that this material is hard to sand, tends to go furry, but I guess I could also look at a very thin coat of filler or, for that matter, prime heavily and sand smooth.
  3. Kevin-the-lubber
    Richard, any knowledge on the dimensional accuracy of Campbell's plans? I've loaded & calibrated them as close as poss' to a measured revell plan (which seems closer to 1:100 than 1:96) but noticed quite a lot of variance on much of the deck furniture, both in size and position. The deckhouses are much, smaller on Campbell and the foredeck extends about 3 feet further aft. While what I know about seafaring wouldn't even fill the proverbial postage stamp, I've once or twice thought that the deck looked a bit tight for space for moving around and Campbell makes far more sense.
  4. Kevin-the-lubber
    Just had a look online at your CNC. The world is your oyster with that machine, if you wanted to shell out for additional tooling I.e. a print head, presumably for filament, plotter, engraver etc. My memory may be playing tricks but I’m fairly sure we used to mill and turn styrene back in one of the places I worked, when whatever machine we were building needed something like a fixed inspection window. Just a question of getting the cutting and travel speeds right. And, to go off topic, you could make and sell some nice after-market scale decks with that thing….
  5. Kevin-the-lubber
    Rolled Steel Joist.
  6. Kevin-the-lubber
    Bill, I hadn’t realised you could varnish between coats, I’ll try that, but will give the sand coat a couple of days to fully dry first. I imagine it also gives you a slight chance to quickly wipe off any mistakes. On my first attempt I used a 0.2 pen and was quite disappointed at how ‘fuzzy’ the lines looked, which makes sense now and, hopefully, won’t happen with a coat of varnish. But I’ll also try a thinner pen this time.
  7. Kevin-the-lubber
    Hi Bruma, yours beautiful example is another log that I’ll use as a major reference and, if it’s okay, I’d like to come back to you soon for more detail on the pin rails. OC, yes, I have to have a go at doing my own shrouds. I fully expect to get bogged down a bit on the rigging as I’ve never done more than tie a few bits of cotton with granny knots back in my childhood. The resin work on this kit is really easy which makes it fun, and my impression is that the masts and yards are quite a bit stronger than hellers so probably don’t need beefing up so much.
  8. Kevin-the-lubber
    No, please carry on, it's all useful info for later, so long as it doesn't bother you too much seeing me blithely do my own thing! That exposed deck would have been 7th heaven for me, I loved working on heavy steelwork. My party trick was creating accurately curved RSJ's of this size using heat and water, got taught it by an old boy when I was a young apprentice and never got tired of doing it.
  9. Kevin-the-lubber
    Ah, now I understand. I thought you were talking about the width of the planks and that neither revell nor scaledecks were accurate in the number of boards across the deck. On my test deck I based the fixing distance on where I wanted to split the deck, which was as far as possible coincident with the fore or aft hatch edges, to minimise the number of joins. And then equidistant fake joints inbetween the splits. All of which was based on the limitations of my resin printer and not in the least connected to the real ship. One of my conclusions is that I would need to filament print supporting beams to go underneath a 2mm resin deck, in order to hold the cross-deck curve. In fact, it would probably end up looking quite similar to the real thing. The reason for filament printing these is that, using e.g. PLA or PETG, I'd get a pretty rigid object whereas anything this small would be too bendy or brittle in resin. It did occur to me that I could of course print a beams framework and individual planks and glue them up - a POF in fact, but out of plastic; but then thought, why would you do that rather than just use wood? Which is why I've parked this - there are all sorts of interesting directions for experimentation, but I want a ship on my windowsill goddammit, and soon 🤪.
  10. Kevin-the-lubber
    No, I didn't know that. I don't think I ever worked in muntz; plenty of copper, brass (beautiful material to work) and esoteric aerospace stuff but not that. So, while my reasons for blending a bit of gold, copper and brass are aesthetic, it'll be on the right track anyway.
  11. Kevin-the-lubber
    Hi Richard, I did and quite quickly decided against it. I bought this kit fairly cheaply off ebay and, if I bought all the goodies, I'd spend two or three times as much on those than the cost of the kit itself and probably still not get a result that warranted that much expenditure. This build is all about doing it fairly quickly, without trying too hard, getting a feel for the CS with a view to a more serious build down the line. For instance, my remakes of the deck furniture are just quick'n'dirty remakes of the kit parts, rather than researching what they should look like. Can you explain this a bit more: "exactly 2 spans long and 7 along forward deckhouse"? I'd quite like that deck plan too, not so much for now but for further experimentation. Obviously I made one based on the revell kit, which looks the part, but if I do find a printing solution I might as well print it true to life.
  12. Kevin-the-lubber
    Glad you're here Bill, I'll be bound to have questions, and here's the first. Did you airbrush the wood washes or hand-brush? Base coat laid this evening, went on like a dream, think I'm starting to get the hang of this air-brushing business now. I'm itching to paint the copper on the hull, I bought the vallejo metals set and messing around on scrap with a mix of copper, gold and bronze gave some lovely colours, with an emerald green wash on top. It's all glued up and primed, but I must sort out the pin rails first and maybe also the fore and aft railings. It looks like you left these until after you'd painted, did it make any difference? I've also bought the hismodel etch name plates and decor as the decals were damaged, waiting for those arrive. I needed to cut out the 'bump rail'(?) on the stern as there was a lot of misalignment, but fortunately found some half-round evergreen in my materials stash which, after a little sanding, blended in very nicely.
  13. Kevin-the-lubber
    It's even more fun driving it! If you ever get the chance, take one up the Llangollen canal; it's beautiful all the way but the Pontcysyllte aqueduct is a very, very unique experience. Bear in mind that, as an ex-mountaineer, heights don't bother me too much but I was utterly petrified taking a boat across this thing. No guard rail on the far side, lean out and you're looking straight down. Never have I steered such a straight line and winced at every little brush against the side. ps. can we have some of your snow please, when it comes back
  14. Kevin-the-lubber
    I think the major thing is less the time-saving nor the mistakes-avoided, though both are invaluable; it's that most of us will build at least a marginally better model through shared knowledge and some (like me, I hope) something way, way better. If I hadn't found this (and previously, Pete Coleman's) site I would have probably finished glueing plastic and painting (badly, with one brush and half a dozen pots of enamel) within a couple of months and then, on seeing a predictably poor example, decided to not even bother with rigging. Or just thought the instructions were too vague and quit because of that. I know mine will still take me years to build but that's partly because this site shows what's possible with patience and care, and, more importantly what patience and care look like in the modelling world. And then there's the fellowship. I really like that nowhere on this site do you see anything other than friendly interest, encouragement and helpfulness, never a 'superior' comment. ps. The biggest thing I've ever sailed is a canal boat (aka narrowboat), don't know if you have these in the states but my ambition is to buy one when I retire in another year or two and spend the next two or three years exploring the country, bit by bit, via the canal system.
  15. Kevin-the-lubber
    nb. I should have mentioned, that deckhouse is a printed version, so you can see what I mean that the revell parts are actually pretty damn good. To be honest I only made this because it looked like fun to do and it's so much easier having it as a single piece. Plus the roof gets negative plank lines.
  16. Kevin-the-lubber
    Thanks Ian. Yes, I'll settle for that, the good thing about making cock-ups is that sometimes you do it better second time round. Go on, join the club, put her back into the dry dock.
  17. Kevin-the-lubber
    Thanks for the additional pics Bill, my log is up now. That's quite a result you've got on the masts lining up, I can tell from here, with a tradesmans' practised eye, that they are absolutely true. I'll be watching these next stages with particular interest as the rigging stage terrifies me, but also because I don't think I can live with the revell mouldings for the CS ratlines.
  18. Kevin-the-lubber
    I’m trying the Vallejo ‘Old & New Wood’ paint set used by Bill as I really like that look. Air-brushing has still been a bit hit and miss with clogging mid-spray. Thinning solves it but I think I’ve been over-thinning the Vallejo model air paints and what works best is the plain paint plus a few drops of flow improver. 5/1/22 Morning: Inked in most of the plank lines. Really difficult to pick out the moulded lines to follow and if I’m honest, it looks like the shipwrights used whatever old planks were knocking around, some a bit wide, others a bit thin. Evening: stripped the deck back to bare plastic with Isopropyl Alcohol and a tooth brush. Much easier than expected, not something I’d be fearful of next time. And strangely satisfying. What a pig’s ear I made of those lines. I don’t know why I thought I could just follow the near invisible moulding, why I didn’t make a little template. 6/1/22 Took advantage of needing to start again to sand off the lumps on the deck for locating the sail lockers and the two little strips under the fore winch which make no sense at all. Bracing rods on these kinds of machines are invariably a few inches up the legs. Neither bits are necessary and just make inking the plank lines more difficult. Undercoating again, along with the fore deckhouse, hopefully better this time, now that I have a formula for avoiding the air-brush clogging.
  19. Kevin-the-lubber
    I’m set on this not becoming another Victory stern, where I spend months and months solving a single problem rather than having fun with the kit, so I’ve more or less abandoned the idea of a DIY printed deck, in part because there would be other engineering problems to resolve even if I did get it printed – at 2mm thick an object of this size will curl post-printing and would need reinforcing on the back. I switched to the kit deck and blending the joints by filing a chamfer on each part then filling and sanding. What I’ve ended up with is reasonable, hard to be sure if it makes much difference until the painting is finished but this is what they look like primed. (I've masked the deckhouse slots with blutak to stop paint building up in these and other key location holes).
  20. Kevin-the-lubber
    As many will know, in their wisdom Revell split the main deck into three parts, making for seams across the middle. This is typical of the kit in some ways, there’s no apparent logic to the splitting of some items. Thus we have separate fore and aft railing sections while built-in along the sides, with more ugly seams and flash to deal with rather than a continuous rail and a bunch of stanchions that need to be glued (the logical approach); likewise a series of pin rails when one long rail would give a better modelling outcome. This is a shame in my view, because the detail quality is generally very good and, if the kit was cut logically it would be a dream to build and yield a good result in most hands. The deck joints bothered me, along with the positive plank lines. I don’t want to spend £70 on a laser cut wood top because this build is just for fun and learning. So I spent about a week experimenting with making a resin printed deck instead. Drafting the model in 3D was straightforward, probably only took 2 or 3 hours. Printing was more troublesome. The idea was to do ‘jigsaw’ joints, following the line of staggered plank ends and make it in 3 or 4 sections due to machine limitations. However, for reasons I don’t yet fully understand, I could not get the joint edges to print true to the design, they keep coming out with a gentle curve across the end such that the joint gets more and more gappy. The photo shows what I mean. I know what’s happening – the curing of each layer is causing microscopic shrinkage that pulls the edges towards the centre – but not how to prevent it. I’ve tried various permutations both design-wise and printing-wise without success. Even looked at whether I could get the deck printed as one piece by a commercial outfit, but it’s too big for anything other than exotic industrial machinery. There are probably a few more different ways I could try to get this printing true; one of them is to at least give it a go on the filament printer, but I’m not too optimistic about this being accurate enough.
  21. Kevin-the-lubber
    13/12/21 I started looking at this kit 2 or 3 weeks ago, as an ‘in-between’ project while I take a break from the Victory. The kit is from 1976, it’s a bit brittle and there’s a lot of flash, some of it so heavy that I’ve needed to look at other logs in order to know what to trim off and what to leave. While I don’t want to get into 3D gymnastics on this kit, I’m re-making most of the deck furniture i.e. the windlass rotor, winch rotors, fife rails, sail lockers, cabins etc, as these are very quick and easy to model in F360 and equally easy to print. I wouldn’t say the end result is better than the kit part, detail-wise, just cleaner/crisper and I get to duck dealing with some joints.
  22. Kevin-the-lubber
    Well, that was what I was trying to achieve, a replacement deck - but I think, rather than hijack Bill's log I'd better start my own for the CS. I'll do that this evening and explain all.
  23. Kevin-the-lubber
    A common complaint, I suspect, especially at this time of the year. I don't drink much but I swear modelling could drive me to it yet. I'll start a log soon-ish Bill, I suspect that for you it'll be somewhat deja vu as your log is my primary reference.
  24. Kevin-the-lubber
    That’s a useful tip Bill, note to self to slightly enlarge the mast holes in the lower decks. I remember thinking, during dry fits, that this was a risky area and once painted likely to be even more so. Isopropyl alcohol is also good for dissolving acrylic paint, and doesn’t dissolve glue (but does make putty go soggy). I know this because I had to strip the entire deck of the CS yesterday evening after making a mess of inking in the plank lines through guessing where they should be where I could barely see them under the base coat - I’m doing the same as you, Vallejo old and new wood. But I have a plan… In passing, I’ve been experimenting, over the last two or three weeks, with re-making the deck in sections as a proxy for doing the whole victory hull and upper decks and learned that this would be extremely difficult to get right. Probably extremely expensive too, with all the trial and error. Getting ‘seamless’ joints in the printing is the problem and not even commercial hobby 3D printing outfits seem able to print a whole deck of this size. No doubt industrial businesses could, but at quite a cost. So at least I now know to let go of those thoughts and, as I feel ‘victory energy’ returning, where to direct that energy when I pick up on it again.
  25. Kevin-the-lubber
    I just fish them out… not so difficult when, 8 years in, I still haven’t glued the hull together 🤪

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